Also common to our board members is the challenge of initiating new support programs on the limited budgets most support organizations have been given to work with. Most support organizations will have to figure out how to get new programs off the ground with the same or fewer resources than they had available to them the previous year.

David Horn

"With the need to finish integrating acquisitions in addition to our business-as-usual support workload while meeting financial obligations that make simply adding headcount out of the question, we face the challenge of maintaining high levels of response, resolution, and satisfaction while tackling additional objectives with much the same resources as before," said David Horn, Senior Vice President, Customer Support for Best Software. "Like a lot of organizations, we have to do more, better, and faster than before for less cost."

With restricted resources, some of our advisors are looking to better segment their customer base to provide levels of support appropriate to each customer situation and contract, and to better meet and manage their service level agreements.

Customer Loyalty
Though customer satisfaction metrics have been a staple for most support organizations, support organizations must begin to move beyond customer satisfaction to measure customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is the demonstrated willingness for customers to continue to buy product and support. It’s a better measure of business success and helps articulate the value of support both internally and to customers.This is extremely important as support organizations are forced to defend revenue margins.

Employee Satisfaction
Another common theme with our advisors is getting closer to their employees – to get employees at all levels more involved earlier in the process of designing products and services. Our advisors emphasized the need to continue hiring and growing/training inspired, engaged employees which logically contributes to better support and raised customer satisfaction and loyalty. Though staff attrition for most is low, maintaining top performers is an important objective.

Maria Anzini

“Our employee retention is great,” said Maria Anzini, Director of Worldwide Customer Service & Product Support, Speedware. “I want to keep it that way. I think continuing education is the key, if employees feel they continue to learn and contribute to company success, chances are they won’t consider other opportunities.” This strategy is supported by the SSPA Top Talent Study in which 93% of employees requested additional training, with a focus on technical skills and business/management skills. The report also found that recognition by management was also a key to motivating and retaining top performers.

Others are working hard to get employees engaged. For example, Dan Roy, Oracle’s director of Americas operations, Oracle Support Services, said, “One of our employee programs is called the Short Term Radical Change program where employees submit ideas on how to improve things, with a proposal for how to do that, as well as a team selected and willing to pilot it for two months. The ideas and plans are evaluated and, if approved, we implement.”

Support Efficiency
To improve support operations and metrics without additional resources means having to operate more efficiently. In this respect, many of our board members are focused on the capture and reuse of resolution information and improving the adoption of Web self-service, both activities supported by knowledge management applications and improved knowledge processes. For most, these initiatives begin with improved internal knowledge management processes before exposing that knowledge to customers.

Web self-service, done well, can improve efficiency as well as customer satisfaction but will it improve customer loyalty? Customer loyalty is built on a foundation of relationships with customers, which can become an issue as customers make greater use of self-service options. “Customer retention and loyalty are important,” said Speedware’s Anzini “With a successful 70% of our calls coming in electronically, the challenge is to ensure that our pro-active customer relationship programs keep adding the kind of value that fosters loyalty.” This is a challenge support organizations will have to address as self-service matures.

Becoming more efficient also means finding ways to meet changing support demand while maintaining operating margins. This point was brought out by our Support Demand Research Series. Those efficiencies will come from a blend of support technologies and improved business processes. In many cases, it doesn’t mean more technology, just better use of existing technology.

Another challenge support organizations will face is the move to models that force them to put more skin in the game – to focus on supporting the customers’ businesses and helping create success, not simply resolving problems. This will require more proactive approaches and will also create opportunities for support organizations to offer new kinds of services to customers.

Dan Roy

Automation is also a key to improved efficiencies. For Oracle’s Roy , that means “initially collecting data about customer systems and environments and evolving to automating some analysis and turning that analysis into resolution scripts. This approach will reduce costs for customers and for us, and maximize the ROI for Oracle products.” Others are investigating and investing in remote diagnostic and monitoring applications.

Other issues
For companies that have been involved in mergers and acquisitions, there is always the challenge of integrating support operations, support systems, and matching support capabilities with the extended product suites and vertical markets. David Horn, Sr. Vice President, Customer Support, Best Software said, “We’ve acquired a number of companies over the years and as the products of those companies are integrated into suites, support faces the challenge of making geographically disperse and system-disparate support operations function like a single entity for both our customers and business partners.”

To maintain margins, more companies will consider moving some of their support functions to less expensive offshore options. This can create issues with customers, and there are hidden costs in infrastructure, staffing, training, and a host of other issues so this must be done with care. That said, there’s little doubt that the outsourcing trend will continue in 2005.

Finally, expect the changing support environment to generate new success factors or metrics. As they’re discovered, the SSPA will track them, explain how to capture and use them, and create benchmarks for the industry. 2005 promises to be an exciting year.